


Saltwater

by interlude



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-17 11:27:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29224680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/interlude/pseuds/interlude
Summary: Five beaches in Stanford Pines' life.Written for the Forduary 2021 prompt: Hurt/Comfort
Relationships: Ford Pines & Stan Pines
Comments: 17
Kudos: 62





	Saltwater

**Author's Note:**

> This turned out shockingly light-hearted for me. Enjoy!

The beach is cold today, the first chill of fall drifting in with the salty morning air. Stanford Pines shivers and pulls his jacket tighter around his shoulders, burrowing into the warm fabric. He doesn’t know how Stanley can stand the frigid water, but his brother looks pleased as can be running back and forth through the rolling waves in nothing but his swimsuit, kicking up water as he goes. Periodically, he crouches and dives both arms in up to his elbows, waving them around beneath the waves before standing again, finding a new spot, and repeating the action.

“What are you doing?” Stanford calls from his spot in the dry sand several yards away. His voice is loud with nothing but the calm waves and the squawking of gulls to compete with. It’s too cold already for tourists and too early for most locals; in a rare occasion, the brothers have the entire beach to themselves, with no one to share it but the occasional curious hermit crab scuttering across their towels. 

Stanley stands and cups his dripping hands over his mouth to shout back. “I’m gonna catch a fish!” 

“With what?” Stanford calls.

His brother throws his arms in the air and wiggles his fingers to show them off. “With these hands!”

Stanford snorts out a laugh. He pushes his glasses back up on the bridge of his nose. “You can’t catch a fish with your bare hands!” he argues through his grin.

“Can too!” Stanley insists. “I’m gonna catch a  _ shark _ !”

Stanford laughs. He doesn’t think it’s possible to catch a fish with nothing but your hands, let alone a shark, who according to his research don’t typically swim this close to shore anyways, but Stanley lives to prove people wrong. Stanford watches his twin prance wildly through the waves, a tempest in the form of a small boy, and pulls his notebook onto his lap. It’s his old school notebook from the year before, the pages wrinkled and worn from frequent use; there’s no free pages left ,  but he manages to find a large enough space on the back of one page to sketch. 

A seagull lands on the sand in front of him. It cocks its head and looks him in the eye. Stanford welcomes the unexpected muse; he picks up his pencil and begins to sketch, glancing up frequently to study the bird before him, checking and double-checking that he’s getting the details right. In the distance, Stanley lets out a triumphant whoop, followed immediately by a devastated yell. Stanford laughs at the sound, but doesn’t look away from the gull taking shape on the paper.

The bird comes closer in search of food. It stops just inches from his towel. Stanford holds his notebook out for it to see the finished portrait. 

“What do you think?” The gull eyes the paper, then pecks at it. “Hey!” Stanford cries, pulling it back protectively against his chest. He waves a hand at the gull, shooing it off, but it doesn’t seem frightened of him, only moves back slightly to dodge his hand before cawing angrily at him.

“Get outta here! Scram!” Stanley has apparently grown tired of his attempt to catch fish. He shakes a leg at the gull until it finally flies away before plopping down on his own towel beside Stanford, laying on his back like a starfish, limbs outstretched and crusted with sand.

Stanford pokes him in the arm. Stanley grunts but doesn’t open his eyes.

“You should put on sunscreen,” Stanford says. 

Stanley sticks his tongue out at him. “The sun’s not even out. It’s too cloudy.”

“You can still get sunburned if it’s cloudy out,” Stanford says. “And if you get burnt, you’ll complain about it.”

“I won’t,” Stanley argues. 

“You  _ will _ .”

“I  _ won’t _ . I’ve never complained in my life!”

It’s so obviously wrong a statement that Stanford doesn’t even bother arguing against it. He pokes his brother again, for no other reason than for the fact that he’s there and Stanford can. Stanley bats his hand away. 

“Did you catch a fish?” Stanford asks, despite the fact that the complete lack of fish gives him his answer.

Stanley rolls over onto his side and looks up at his brother. The sand is sticking to every wet part of him. It’s even in his curly hair, though Stanford is utterly perplexed how he could have managed that in the short time they’ve been here.

“No,” he huffs. “I was  _ this _ close” —he pinches his thumb and pointer finger together to indicate a miniscule space—”but it slipped right outta my hands.” He leans over to look at Stanford’s open notebook. “Watcha drawing?”

Stanford pulls the book back slightly so it’ll be safe from the saltwater dripping from Stanley’s hair but holds it up so his brother can see the sketch. “Seagull.”

“It’s good,” Stanley says with a decisive nod. “You should give him a hat.”

Stanford bursts out laughing. “A hat?”

Stanley grins at him. “Yeah! A hat!”

Stanford pulls out his pen. “What kind of hat?”

Stanley seems to think over that for a moment. “A top hat. No, wait, give him a cowboy hat like the Lone Ranger!”

Stanford giggles as he sketches a cowboy hat on the seagull’s head while Stanley cheers him on. 

Overhead, the clouds shift just enough so that the sun can peek through, bathing the two boys below in warm sunlight. In this moment, they’re both young and safe, untouched by the tragedies that will befall them later in life, and happy to have the beach, their home away from home, all to themselves.

* * *

Charleston, South Carolina boasts much nicer beaches than New Jersey. It seems sunnier and warmer than the beach of Stanford’s childhood, free of glass and with much better upkeep, although it's overflowing with tourists in a way that Glass Shard Beach never was. 

Perhaps that has more to do with the particular time of year. Spring Break is not a time Stanford would have chosen to visit a beach if he had been the one making the call. He tries desperately to tune out the sounds of screeching college students, burying his nose in the battered copy of  _ 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea _ he’d brought with him —which he’d chosen mostly to stick to the theme of the trip . Unfortunately, it’s hard to focus on the words of Captain Nemo when the beach is so crowded and noisy. 

With a sign, he marks his page and gives it up as a lost cause, dropping the book into the sand beside him. He pulls his knees up to his chest and rests his chin on them, watching his classmates. Some of them have started a game of volleyball. He dully watches the ball’s trajectory back and forth between the teams. 

He’s not quite sure why he’d agreed to come on this trip in the first place, though he suspects it has a lot to do with a stubborn sense of nostalgia and longing he’s been unable to beat back. It’s been a long time since he’s been to a beach. The one near his childhood home had become all but taboo to him after his brother’s disownment, the sand and the waves and even the smell of the salt carrying far too many memories of Stanley, not to even mention the sad, dilapidated boat falling apart at the docks and left to rot.

Backuspmore is in West Virginia. It’d been part of the reason he’d settled on it, because on top of offering him a full ride, it’d at least been out of New Jersey, and that had felt like a win in a long series of losses. It’s far enough from home that he feels like he can shake himself free of his roots and the painful memories they carried, but it’s also utterly landlocked, full of mountains and trees rather than beaches. 

He stopped going home last year. He’d told his parents it was because of his studies — he’d taken on extra classes during the summer term, after all —b ut the ugly truth of it was that it was just growing too hard to stomach returning to that apartment and the arguments it carried, the ghosts left lingering in corners, and the beach down the way that held too many nostalgic reminders, preserved as perfectly as photographs.

Stanford’s past is painful. He prefers to stay focused on his future, on his studies and his inventions and the many achievements he plans to make. 

And yet some part of him must still long for the beach, because when a fellow classmate had asked him on this trip, he’d opened his mouth and agreed before his brain could even fully process the thought. She hadn’t really asked him because she’d liked him, of course; he wasn’t foolish enough to think he was actually wanted here. He’d just been in the right place at the right time —or perhaps the wrong place at the wrong time—to hear her inviting his roommate, and when she’d seen that he’d overheard, she’d grown flustered and had tacked on an invitation for him out of fear of leaving him out.

He doubts she expected him to accept. He’s frankly still surprised he did.

Maybe the sea was just calling to him, begging him to return after so long away. And maybe the smell of the salty breeze ruffling his curls is driving him to nonsensical poetic melodrama. He sighs, burying his face in his knees. Underneath the laughter and shouts, he can hear the rhythmic push and pull of the waves, in time with his steady breathing.

When they return to the hotel, he’ll be forced to make small talk with people he only barely knows until it’s acceptable for him to escape to his room and hide himself away in the remaining pages of his book. The others won’t tell him that his presence is ruining their trip, that he’s brought an uncomfortable awkwardness with him as he always does, and he thinks it’s kind of them not to mention it aloud, but he knows he has. It’s perfectly clear he doesn’t quite belong here, just as he’s never belonged amongst any group in school so far, never really comfortable unless he’s in the library or in class.

He wonders if it was worth coming at all.

Perhaps. 

As much as he might deny it, it's nice to see the ocean again. 

* * *

The waters are calm today and warmer than usual. Stanford sits on the dock with his pants rolled up, his feet sunken up to his ankles. He drags one foot upwards into the air and watches the water splash as he does.

“What do you think we’ll see out there?”

He glances behind him to see Stanley kneeling on the deck of the Stan o’ War, a can of fresh boat varnish open beside him. They’d both saved up for weeks just to afford enough to cover the whole boat in a fresh coat.  Stanford leans back on his haunches and sets his own paintbrush down on the deck. He raises a hand to grip his chin, making a big deal out of thinking it over. “Hmmmm. I don’t know. Whales, probably.”

Stanley flicks some varnish at him. “I meant cool stuff, poindexter. We can see whales here.”

Stanford resists the urge to throw varnish back. If it turns into a fight, they’ll end up wasting it all tossing it on each other’s clothes instead of the boat, and it will take several more weeks to save up enough for more. 

“We will see whales, Stanley,” he insists stubbornly. “It’s the ocean.”

“What about the treasure we’ll see? Or the babes?”

Stanford rolls his eyes, picking his paintbrush back up and resuming his work. “Is that all you can think about?” he huffs, mostly a tease, but with some honesty buried beneath. It is about all his brother has been able to talk about, and Stanford doesn’t know how to bring up the fact that he isn’t particularly interested in either. “What about foreign cultures? Or sea monsters? There’s hundreds of previously unproven creatures out there we might encounter.” He can’t quite hide his excitement at the thought of being the one to prove once and for all the existence of various fabled sea creatures. Just the thought of his name listed alongside them in history books gives him a thrill.

“Okay,” Stanley concedes. “I guess that’d be pretty cool. Too bad you ain’t going to see them, though.”

Stanford’s hand fumbles on his brush. He looks up at his brother in confusion. “What?”

Between one second and the next, Stanley’s entire demeanor has changed. He’s standing now, looming above Stanford in a way that feels threatening. With the sun behind him, his face is cast in harsh shadow, making his features sharp and eerie. There’s an awful grin on his face. Stanford’s stomach twists at the sight of it.

“You’re not going with me,” Stanley says viciously. “I don’t need you anymore. Actually, I don’t  _ want _ you anymore.”

Something clenches Stanford’s lungs in a tight grasp. He can’t breathe. He can’t look away from his brother’s awful grin.

“What —Stanely, what are you talking about?” he gasps out, taking a step backwards, desperate to get away from this cruel version of his brother.

Something cracks beneath his foot. A quick look down reveals the shattered pieces of his perpetual motion machine, strone about without care across the dirty tile of their high school gym. A stray bolt rolls away. Stanford’s eyes follow it as it goes, disappearing from view into the darkness that he’s just now realized is surrounding them. 

“I don’t want you in my life anymore,” Stanley sneers. Stanford can’t figure out where the sun has gone. His face is almost completely obscured by shadow now. “Why do you think I did this?” He gestures towards the pieces at Stanford’s feet. “You’re too weird, Stanford. You don’t like normal things. You really think I wanted to be the  _ freak’s brother _ the rest of my life?” He barks a laugh that sounds nothing like him, and it scares Stanford to his core.

His brother is laughing at him—not in a way that’s meant to be light-hearted, but malicious and cruel, like every other person that has laughed at Stanford for being too different, too unusual, too strange. 

Too much of a freak.

He tries to swallow past the lump in his throat. He looks back at the shattered pieces and lets anger build up within him. It devours the fear and the grief in a great big blaze of fury. “How could you?” he cries, glaring at his brother, letting the anger rise and rise until there’s nothing else left. “How could you do this to me?”

Stanley grins. “Because I hate you.”

It lands like a punch to his gut. He wheezes, gasping for air. The anger fizzles out. Stanford feels weak without it, hollowed out and empty and aching in the spaces left behind.

And then suddenly Stanley is gone. Stanford is in the woods, fallen pine needles crunching beneath his boots, the smell of dirt and trees filling his nose.

“Boy, your brother is a real peach.”

He turns to see Bill hovering in the air beside him and breathes a sigh of relief at the sight of his friend. It was only a nightmare. Not that that matters much, he supposes. The worst parts of it had been real. He still feels them stinging.

It’s been a long time since he’s seen Stanley. He wonders why it’s still this hard to let him go.

“Yes,” Stanford agrees, scrubbing a hand over his face. “Thank you for ending the dream.”

“I couldn’t just sit there and let him say those things to you, Sixer.”

Stanford shifts uncomfortably. Hearing the nickname so soon after the memory of his brother hurts. But Bill means no harm with it, and it’d be rude to ask him to stop, so he says nothing about it and bears the sting it causes.

“You’re better off without him, honestly,” Bill continues. 

Stanford takes a seat on a fallen tree trunk. He prompts his elbows on his knees and laces his fingers together. His hands are shaking. He tries to make them stop, but they refuse to listen.

“I know,” he says weakly, wishing the words felt more honest. It’s hard to remember when the memories bubble up to the surface, bright and happy and free of pain, filled with beaches and summer fun and his brother beside him. 

Stanford breathes in the scent of pine trees, letting the memory of the beach fall away. 

* * *

The dimension that Stanford currently finds himself in is alien in all the ways the others have been, aside from one key familiarity. There’s a beach. 

It’s very much like the beaches from Earth, although the sand is a light lilac and far softer to the touch than the coarse sand of Glass Shard Beach had been. He scoops up a handful and lets it run through his fingers. 

In contrast, the ocean is nearly identical to the one painted on so many of his memories, murky and dark, crashing against the purple sand in a gentle rhythm so familiar that it soothes something weathered and worn deep within him. Stanford closes his eyes and breathes in time with the waves, savoring this rare moment of peace.

He breathes in a deep breath and takes salt on his tongue. It’s so familiar he almost cries.

He wonders if he will ever see the beach of his childhood ever again. Sometimes, when the weight of his travels get too heavy, he curses himself for ever wasting the time he’d had on Earth avoiding that place. Sometimes, he wants nothing more than to see New Jersey once more, to wade through the icy water of Glass Shard Beach up to his calves, to trail the hallways of his childhood home and run his fingers along the wallpapered walls. 

A startled gasp pulls him from his reverie. 

He turns to see two of this dimension’s inhabitants, both staring at him with wide, frightened eyes. Both are humanoid, although with pale blue bumpy skin, long tentacle-like appendages in the place of hair, and two more arms each than he has. From their small stature and the fact that one of them appears to be holding toys meant for sculpting sandcastles —familiar in appearance and apparent use, even if he can’t identify the material—he makes the educated guess that they’re children. One of them, the smaller and perhaps younger one, hides their face behind the other’s two right arms. 

The one being used as a human shield sees the younger’s fear and levels him with the fiercest glare they can manage, balling their free hands up into fists and raising them protectively, sending the message loud and clear that they won’t let themselves be taken by this strange alien creature without a fight.

They must be siblings, Stanford realizes, and the thought hits him more forcefully than any attack could. 

Two siblings coming down to the beach to play.

The older one barks something at him he can’t understand and that the translator he’d picked up a few dimensions back seems unable to translate, unhelpfully informing him that the words are not registered in its database.

Stanford shifts forward so that he’s kneeling, afraid to stand in case his height scares the children even more. He raises his hands in surrender and realizes, as he often still does, that it is not the number of fingers that make him look so strange in their eyes, but everything else about him. 

“I won’t hurt you,” he tells them gently. He knows there’s very little chance they can understand him, but he hopes the tone of his voice could at least persuade them he means them no harm.

The older one steps completely in front of the younger, shielding them from his view. 

Stanford eyes the tools in the younger one’s hands; an idea comes to mind. He’s built countless sandcastles in his lifetime, and his hands easily settle into the movements, gathering the lilac sand into a large mound before shaping it into towers and parapets with practiced fingers. Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the children watching him with guarded interest. The younger one peeks out from behind their sibling’s arms to see him better.

Stanford acts as if he doesn’t notice their attention, keeping his eyes on the sandcastle slowly taking shape below him. Despite the difference in texture and color, the sand is just as easy to shape as the sand of his home dimension. Within a few minutes, he has a fairly decent castle built. He leans back, eyeing it appreciatively, then glances up and down the beach beside him for something to adorn it with. Oddly enough, there are no shells in sight. 

Footsteps announce the arrival of one of the children. He looks up to see the younger standing before him, looking down at the castle with wonder. The older shouts something that might be a name or a warning, hurrying up to them and fixing him with a threatening stare.

Stanford leans back on his feet, placing his hands behind his back and out of sight, trying to make himself look as nonthreatening as possible. 

The younger child crouches down, poking at the sandcastle experimentally. They give a laugh of delight, recognizable despite the language barrier, and then look up at him with a grin. Stanford smiles back. 

The child reaches into the bucket they’re carrying and pulls free a glittering gem. It looks somewhat like a shell in shape, but far more colorful and made of completely different material than the shells he’s used to. They place it on the top of the tallest tower and glance up at him to check his reaction. Stanford eyes the placement, then nods appreciatively, smiling gently at the child. It certainly does look far better with decoration.

The child squeals with delight. They pull more gemstones from their bucket and place them around the castle, covering it in glittering stones. The older child watches him closely, but gradually relaxes as he does nothing but watch and smile encouragingly.

When the younger child is out of gems, they look up again at Stanford again for approval.

“Bravo!” he says, knowing perfectly well they won’t be able to understand. He claps his hands, hoping that it’s a universal gesture. “Bravo, my dear!”

They let out an infectious laugh. He can’t help laughing along with them. For all that traveling through the multiverse is exhausting and perilous, for all that he wishes he could return home, these are the moments he treasures.

The older sibling snatches the other child’s hand and gently leads them away from Stanford. Some of the wariness has left their features, but not all of it; they watch him carefully as they walk away. He can’t fault them for it.

They don’t go far. Stanford can still hear their joyous cries as they play amongst the waves on another part of the beach. They sound familiar. If he closes his eyes, it could almost be Stanley’s yells, and the crashing waves the sound of his own home.

* * *

Stanford watches the sun rise over the ocean, bathing the dark waves in a pale pink light. The salty sea breeze is frigid this far up north, but the coffee mug in his hands is warm. He clutches it tightly, hoping the warmth might seep into the rest of him. 

The Stan o’ War is currently docked in the bering strait of Alaska, and while they haven’t yet gone ashore, the coastline is visible from his perch on the dock. Covered in snow and ice, it looks beautiful. It also might be the home of the A-Mi-Kuk, which had served as greater motivation for their visit than any tourist-pleasing views.

Stanford takes a sip of coffee and closes his eyes, letting himself sink into the moment he finds himself in. The boat sways gently in the waves beneath him. 

“I don’t know how the hell you get up this early,” comes a cranky, groggy voice behind him. 

Stanford opens his eyes to see Stanley, eyes still glazed over with sleep, shuffling along the deck towards him. He sets a tackle box and fishing rod down on the deck and takes a seat beside Stanford, letting out an exaggerated groan as his knees pop with the movement. 

They’re the same age, and Stanford has spent half of his life in harsh conditions, but sometimes he thinks that Stanley wears the years worse than him — an uncomfortable thought he doesn’t often like dwelling on, especially when the Stanley he still remembers best had been an unstoppable well of energy.

“What are you doing up?” he asks.

Stanley lifts his fishing rod. “Fishing,” he grunts. He opens the tackle box and begins rummaging through the lures inside.

Stanford watches as he selects one and prepares the hook. “Before sunrise?” he asks.

Stanley raises a hand and gestures vaguely at the still-rising sun in front of them. “Eh. Sun’s up.”

“True, but you normally sleep in later.” Not to mention that he hardly even sounds awake right now, voice thick and slurred with sleep.

“Well, there’s some fish you catch better early in the morning,” Stanley huffs, casting the line. Stanford follows it with his eyes, watching the bobber float along the waves. “Get off my back. Do I need to give you a reason for everything I do?”

It’s just odd, is all. A change to the routine they’ve carefully cultivated so far in their journey. Stanford wakes up early, and Stanely sleeps in late, because in his own words it’s his hard-earned right now that he’s retired.

“Well, no, but —”

“It’s too early for talking, Sixer,” Stanley says, a huge yawn interrupting him. “Just sit there there and enjoy your coffee.”

Silence falls over them, but it’s an easy silence, no longer strained and bitter the way it once was. They’ve had a lot of time to talk over the past few months, endless time to relearn each other, trade stories of their lives, and work through past hurts. It’s not always been peaceful. They’re both incredibly stubborn people, and a small boat makes for cramped and tense living quarters. Just the other week, Stanley had chewed him out for leaving his books on every flat surface of the boat, and Stanford has been about ready to commit fratricide just to end Stanley’s incessant humming. 

He’s tone deaf. It doesn’t stop him.

But the fights are manageable and easy compared to the ones they’ve had before, and buried beneath all of them is the steady, now unshakeable knowledge that they are loved and wanted, and that alone smooths so many old aches and pains. Stanford can think of nowhere else he’d rather be than here on this boat by his brother’s side, early morning grumpiness and all.

He watches Stanley stubbornly try to fish despite the fact that he keeps nodding off, head dropping and eyes slipping shut before he startles and rights himself again. Stanford nudges him and offers up the rest of his coffee.

“Thanks,” Stanley says, trading off the fishing rod for the mug.

Stanford holds it, jigging it slightly the way he remembers his father teaching him to the few times he’d taken them fishing off the docks. 

The sun has nearly risen completely now; it casts a beautiful light over the calm ocean waves, glittering off the snow-covered banks of Alaska. It’s just one of many sunrises that Stanford has taken the opportunity to enjoy on their journey, but it might be the first that Stanley has been awake for, and he wonders again at the change of routine. From how desperately his brother is clinging to the caffeine he offered, he can’t imagine Stanley actually wants to be awake this early just to catch fish.

Maybe the fish are just an excuse. Perhaps Stanley had just wanted to spend the early morning peace with him. 

The thought warms him from the inside out, seeping into his chilled fingers and toes better than any coffee could. He turns to smile at his brother. Stanley’s brows furrow.

“Whatcha smiling at me for?”

Stanford smiles wider, suddenly overcome with everything. He’s home, safe at last, free to live his life however he wishes to, and his brother is at his side once again, ready and willing to spend it with him. They’ve wasted so much time with misunderstandings and tragedy, either at each other’s throats or dimensions apart, but they’ve been granted a second chance, and Stanford is determined to treasure the remaining time they have.

“I’d like to go ashore today,” he says, changing the subject. “I think we’d have a greater chance of finding the A-Mi-Kuk on land than in the water.”

Stanley snorts. He takes another sip of coffee. “You and your sea monsters,” he mutters fondly.

“And I’m sure there’s a bar of some sort we could find afterwards. Or a town where we could find gifts for the children,” Stanford suggests.

“Now you’re talking.”

“I was also thinking that it might be nice to head somewhere warmer for a while. Perhaps the Bahamas.” He looks at Stanley. “Or somewhere else. Your pick.”

“My pick?” Stanley asks, grinning. “Costa Rica then. Or Cancun. Sunny beaches and babes!”

Stanford snorts. “I think we’re a little too old for babes.”

“Speak for yourself, poindexter.”

Stanford raises an eyebrow. “Remind me what happened in that pub in Ireland.”

Stanley flushes. He takes a sip of coffee to hide his face. “That was a fluke,” he mutters.

Stanford laughs. “Oh, a fluke. Of course. My apologies.”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up. How about that time you tried to speak Welsh and insulted the bartender bad enough we got kicked out?”

When it gets a bit later in the day, they’ll head ashore and search for the A-Mi-Kuk, and then they’ll head to Costa Rica or Cancun or wherever Stanley finally decides on and spend some time soaking up the warm sunshine, enjoying the local beaches and cuisine, and acting like tourists for a while.

After that, they’ll go wherever the wind or their fancy takes them. Stanford Pines doesn’t have a true plan for his life anymore. He’s not concerned with winning awards or accolades or proving himself to people who never cared to look beyond his differences and see the best in him in the first place. He’s no longer burdened with the weight of stopping the end of the world or dedicating his life to destroying Bill.

All he has is a boat and the ocean and his brother beside him. 

It’s all he needs.


End file.
